Academic Integrity

The Beanland Memorial Library Academic integrity policy C.S. Lewis said, “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.”

Academic ethics and integrity: Brisbane Girls Grammar School aspires to maintain the highest academic standards of teaching, research, and scholarship. The Beanland Memorial Library is committed to facilitating quality learning experiences and outcomes for all users through the fostering of independent scholarly learning, critical judgment, academic integrity, and ethical conduct. Library staff will promote such behaviours and provide assistance and information about expected standards of exemplary academic behaviour. Users, therefore, have a responsibility to maintain such standards in their work. Research tasks depend upon critical thinking and the ability to make reasoned decisions and conclusions. Informed judgements and sound opinions depend upon critical reflection. Much learning and scholarship is dependent upon the work and ideas of others, but users will acknowledge, through appropriate standards of citation and referencing, the work of others from whom they have drawn conclusions or interpretations. Referencing demonstrates the scope of a user’s research and offers evidence and justification for the conclusions and opinions expressed. Brisbane Girls Grammar School insists upon ethical dealing with respect to intellectual property. Information about copyright, the compilation of precise reference lists and accurate referencing is readily available to all users. Students will be expected to attest to the authorship of their own work. Referencing protocols, standards, and examples will be available to staff and students and the library staff will actively promote and support the acquisition of skills in this area. Failure to reference appropriately will be considered unethical academic behaviour. Copyright: Copyright is a right of ownership in special property, which includes literary, musical, and artistic works and sound recordings, computer software, and on-line information.

Copyright includes the right not only to • reproduce a work in material or electronic form, • publish a work, • perform a work in public, • broadcast a work, • make an adaptation to a work, but also to authorise other persons to do any of the above.

In the absence of permission from the copyright owner or his/her agent, it is a breach of copyright to perform one of the above acts. It is clear, therefore, that subject to a number of special exceptions, copying without authorisation is illegal.

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Information about permitted copying is openly available. Notices detailing the concept of “fair dealing” and copyright warnings are prominently displayed above all library devices. Referencing: Students will be explicitly taught that it is necessary to identify the source of ideas or a quotation in academic writing. This enables the reader to locate the source in the Reference List at the end of the piece of work. It will be made clear that this holds true even when the ideas from another author’s work are summarised or paraphrased. Failure to do this will be considered plagiarism and will be regarded in the same manner as cheating in an examination. The School standard for referencing is APA, a version of the author/date system. In conjunction with academic staff, the library staff will assist in the development and instruction of School standards. Students will be explicitly taught that attention to detail is necessary, including punctuation. Teachers may penalise incomplete or inconsistent referencing. Instructions on the compilation of a Reference list and how to undertake accurate referencing and in-text citations will be available in the library and on the library pages on Minerva, but especially in AskClio resources. Software to compile reference lists [CiteMaker] will be purchased and made available to students via library staff and resources. Authorship: Students will be expected to sign authorship statements guaranteeing the originality of, and/or “fair dealing” within, their work. Plagiarism: Plagiarism is the action of using or copying the ideas or creative work of another person and representing it as one’s own original work. These include both published (in print or electronically) and unpublished documents, artwork, music, photographs, etc. Students seeking unfair advantage by such intentional appropriation are guilty of academic misconduct and may incur penalties. Library staff will educate staff and students in ethical research strategies so that academic expectations are fulfilled and respect for other people’s original thinking and creative products is encouraged. It is also unacceptable for one student to lend her original work to another student who may copy the piece, in part or in whole, and then submit it as her own. Examples of plagiarism: The following acts submitted in assessment items, without citing and referencing, are considered plagiarism. This will be a section of the assignment task provided by teachers.

• Direct copying • Copying of ideas, research (e.g. statistics, graphed results, etc), images, etc. • Paraphrasing or summarising ideas without changing the meaning or structure • “Cutting and pasting” from a number of sources • Presenting as independent, work done in collaboration with others

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